1. Make a prog for people to enlist into the Merchant Guard through. Have it include basic equipping (pulling from something similar to the arrow box?), making the player recite the oath, making the player post on a board about joining.

2. More distributed leadership. Especially in the crafter guilds where high level leadership is currently required to make deals with individuals.

3. More stuff players will actually buy in the shops. I suspect this is, at least in part, due to VNPC sells eating up everything. Maybe create a container that can be kept in the stockroom to hold items that won't be eaten up by VNPC purchases?

1. I'd prefer having the option to join from chargen. The framework for that is already in the code anyways.

2. The lodge is a cancer I agree. I already suggested in the guard forums that they should expand the ranks a bit to have more mid-level players take responsibilities.

3. Nerf the bloody hell out of vnpc sales. Do these businesses really need such ridiculous cash? They should buy less frequently and buy less things. The income from a shop that only gets vnpc buyers should be a fraction of what it is, if you want to make mega cash you should put items that appeal to PCs up. Ie. ARMOR, WEAPONS, ARROWS, CLOTHES. Even furniture now that rooming places are up.

Set up a weekly date for regular RPTs. The orcs do this on mondays, and I am almost always online for them animating stuff on those days with plot and adventure. Staff can prep in advance, and it's nice and reliable.

I think that would do a hell of a lot more for all of you than economy tweaks frankly, and its the big thing that's been missing from the sphere.

Set up a weekly date for regular RPTs. The orcs do this on mondays, and I am almost always online for them animating stuff on those days with plot and adventure. Staff can prep in advance, and it's nice and reliable.

I think that would do a hell of a lot more for all of you than economy tweaks frankly, and its the big thing that's been missing from the sphere.

I agree with this.

However, my suggestions are tailored towards making it possible for a new character to come into Utterby and actually be able to equip themselves if they choose, then pursue whatever actions they like. As is, this isn't possible.

I can't imagine a new player entering Utterby for the first time sticking around for for the week(s) it can take to get armor ordered, delivered, and find clan leads to join their desired clan. It is much more likely they will simply stop playing and move on to another MUD or game.

1. Foremen can permit their members to make deals within their branch if they like. A foreman can authorize Joe Bob to make deals and give him the required clanning to do so. Foremen can also appoint sub-foremen with similar authority to themselves if they really want. The key is, a Foreman runs their branch. They can run it within the bounds of the rules provided.

2. I'll be adding an Auction Mobile to the game in the center square of Utterby to help with some of this.

3. Basecamp added so that it gets assigned to a staffer to make an automated Guard recruitment prog.

1. Foremen can permit their members to make deals within their branch if they like. A foreman can authorize Joe Bob to make deals and give him the required clanning to do so. Foremen can also appoint sub-foremen with similar authority to themselves if they really want. The key is, a Foreman runs their branch. They can run it within the bounds of the rules provided..

Replace shops with the auction house, and make the auction house object an open market place. Let players establish the value of objects and the economy, instead of backend code doing it for them. Don't add vNPC sales to the auction house.

SOI3's economy was best in its second month, after the firewood famine was over, and players were mostly just selling/trading things to each other directly, and setting the prices themselves.

Songweaver wrote:Replace shops with the auction house, and make the auction house object an open market place. Let players establish the value of objects and the economy, instead of backend code doing it for them. Don't add vNPC sales to the auction house.

SOI3's economy was best in its second month, after the firewood famine was over, and players were mostly just selling/trading things to each other directly, and setting the prices themselves.

I think this is possibly the best solution. I proposed mine as a compromise to minimize whiney-ness due to the loss of vNPC profits.

However, it may create problems with available coinage and keeping the Lodge's relative advantage to independent crafters.

Songweaver wrote:Forcing inherent advantages upon clans only serves to allow those clans to not have to be proactive enough to achieve success on their own. That's true for crafting clans and combat clans.

Competition and/or adversary is the way to drive clan proactivity.

The problem here is that there will always be certain clans due to OOC/Gameworld factors. I think the competition/adversary has to be generated inter-clan among it members in order to ensure the efficiency of a clan. This, however, means that it has to be possible to replace ineffective leadership, ideally through a mechanism built into the structure of the Clan. In Utterby, a democratic process could be interesting with elections for the various positions in each of sanctioned clans (IE the Lodge and the Merchant Guard). These elections could be to decide the top 2 or 3 candidates for the NPC clanleads to decide from.

The argument could be made that this will just result in a popularity contest, but isn't that basically all the human sphere has always been?

It could create a lot of interesting RP too.

Songweaver wrote:Without importing/exporting, the only income is from vNPC sales and newbie coin, and neither one of those things is healthy for the economy or clan development.

Paydays too, unless they now use IG coin rather then just appearing more out of thin air.

I just want to note a few things. And I realize it might mean agreeing to disagree on some things.

We aren't replacing all shops or shops in general with the auction house.

The ownership and running of a shop is something a lot of non-combatant aligned characters dream of and look forward to. So while I agree with and love the idea of an auction house, it isn't going to become the sole source of buying and selling. (We also might need to discuss where it should really be built. )

- vNPC sales are going to be offset by the yearly fees attached to renewal of a license to have them. We may indeed also adjust them after considering some data.

However - having experienced being a crafter on games with no sort of vNPC sales as much as it might be imagined to solve some problems, IMHO it causes others in it's place.

Mostly that one PC can quickly make any others who desire that PC build quickly moot. In sort, the person with the most OOC playing time becomes the powerhouse crafter. And with only other PCs to sell to (in the AH only model) - whoever has the most skill (whether through twinking or starting with RPP) the fastest will quickly corner the market. Which sounds amazing from an economic standpoint, perhaps, but less so on the appealing to players standpoint.

Sorry ... we already have an X, your PC is pointless.

Also if all crafters have to rely solely on the whims of other PCs for the money to fund their practice, you can quickly run into the situation of being stuck as a poor skill level, essentially ... forever. If there's another PC people prefer to go to instead, someone who already has a higher skill. Who this is making money, who thus can keep working on their skill. Etc, etc. I've personally experienced this on other games, and it's rather maddening.

Have ships arrive (vNPCly) from other towns, and let PCs sell goods that they need (different for every town) at a marked up rate, and in turn buy goods rare to Utterby at a comparably marked up rate.

That's still bringing in vNPC coin from ... "space" to prove a "faucet" for IC coin. The only difference is the source is RPly external rather than internal. And I agree - really, vNPC sales from native Utterby citizen purchases should be less and there should be a higher focus on exports.

But ... arguably the vNPCs arriving to some of these shops -are- traders from the different settlements coming to visit shops. They just go and shop around town, following you know ... the Artisan Union's rules and not just allow everyone to come on down to the docks and sell them ... whatever.

But yes, a more nuanced export/import system would be nice. The current one is a bit static and difficult to update.

I believe there are some possible alternative solutions in response to Frigga's analysis.

I agree that one PC with high skill in a craft-set can dominate the game world as things stand. To remedy this I would suggest a change to the code so that, as players 'branch' new, advanced crafts, they LOSE the ability to do a more basic craft in that category. ICly this can be justified as masters believing it is now below their station to do such trivial tasks. The impact on the game world is that this would require masters and senior crafters to hire apprentices to accomplish these tasks for them, or to go to the market and buy the requisite items. So the master weapon-smith no longer carves wooden handles: they have their apprentices do such things, and focus entirely on blades and assembly. Or, they have to buy the simpler components in the market place if they don't want to hire apprentices.

Another possibly simpler option is to make all the "master" crafts require the presence of one or two followers who have some lesser but close level of the same skill. So, to even assemble a "master" sword, the master must have one or two followers of "talented" or "familiar" level to assist when the craft is attempted. This would motivate the master to recruit and train up apprentices to near their level.

In either case, the master can make master-level items only if they assist in training up others along with them (directly or indirectly), and when (inevitably) she is killed or retires from the game, those assistants will already have close to the master's skills, and their task to replace her will be as much about the RP required to assemble their own team of assistants as it will be to spam-out junk in order to branch those final master crafts, or reach that master level.

I can't say if either of those or some other mechanism would best serve this purpose, but in general: PC interdependency is the key to encouraging role-play and inclusion of newer players in the activities and schemes of the more senior players. We all recognize the power that comes from being independent and reliant on no one else in the game for ones success, but from the point of view of keeping the game viable and engaging for less advanced players, it is necessary to thwart us in our pursuit of this independence.

There was a great post recently about how to become the best PvP combat winner. It's likely all correct. But that build will inevitably lose by the average PK build that is able to assemble a good team of comrades and allies around them, via good role playing. That's the way it should be. And that's the model I am appealing to with the suggestions I make above. Block masters from being masters if they don't assemble a team around them and provide that team with opportunities to advance as well.

I do believe that in general 'crowd intelligence' and a supply and demand economy (auction houses, eliminating vNPC income) in our virtual world would be-- in the long run-- much easier for staff to maintain once it is set up, as well as to manipulate for story purposes. They should consider the constant burden of micro-management that a soviet-style central economy inevitably requires. Our players and our player's tastes and skills vary over time, so as far as balancing an economy goes they'll NEVER be able to "get it right" Regulating the economy will demand constant 'tweaking,' and clever players will always find ways to out smart the staff-run centralized economy in that one particular area where they are concentrating their mental energies. When we are able to "out-smart" a staff created code and policies, people get angry and often perceive favoritism. When a clever player "out smarts" a free market economy, the other players have no one to blame but themselves for missing the opportunities the clever player exploited.

Having a master craftsman need to be supported by pc's with lesser skill levels is a terrible idea. The mud has gone almost an RL month without a proper armorer after the lodge's disappeared. Imagine what would happen if good armor could only be made by having multiple armorers at one time?

I truly hate vnpc sales. I understand they have to be there in some capacity but the quantity seems too high. What bothers me more than anything is some clans sitting on thousands upon thousands of coins but never doing anything other than earning more. There is no investment in other players or the town or the plot.

I mean I could blame the players in control of this wealth but I think it has more to do with incentive to spend. Why should the lodge ever invest in someone wanting to open a shop who isn't joining the lodge? Why would the lodge want to outfight fighters to the teeth to fight for the town? Why would the lodge want to fund X project for any reason other than earning more money for them.

I think that is a problem with the setting. How do we correct this? I dont know. How does America encourage its 1% to invest in the 99%...bad example.

I don't get auction houses. I could have sworn we tried them back in the old SoI. Or was I thinking of another mud? I can't remember.

Either way, they're pointless. The purpose of an auction house is to auction off items. Not to stop vNPCs to buy. So unless it's items that a lot of people want and carry a larger investment, then there's no actual point to having one. Like, are you going to auction off boots? I don't get it. I mean anything that's expensive stays in a shop for roughly ever, whereas if it's cheap it can be made in the thousands. Like the weapon/armor shops. There are items that have been there for weeks, months even. I'm assuming vNPCs frequent these shops but I don't know.

The problem is that the craftsmen don't actually put much new stuff in the shops. Maybe you think vNPCs are buying all the stuff you want? They're really not. It's that no one is selling the stuff you want. A lot of PC crafters also sell stuff directly to other PCs

Now a commodities market. That would make more sense in the long run. 10 logs of oak, a bundle of pelts, etc. That's the kind of stuff that people actually need and there's a constant demand for it. It makes sense to sell a bundle of pelts that way as more than 1 person needs those pelts. However, this would put the power in the seller's hands. There's no way the Lodge would be happy with that. I don't mean that Jolak the PC would care. I mean the vNPC leadership of the Lodge and the Union. If they couldn't dictate the cost of raw materials I imagine they'd be pretty pissed. However, it makes so much more realistic sense to have a commodities auction house than an AH for boots and cloaks.

Trying to stop vNPC sales is equally pointless. This game does not have the playerbase to support an entirely player driven economy. If we could get 50-100 people in Utterby, then maybe. But until then, absolutely not. It will not work. Can always tweak the numbers, sure. But removing them will absolutely not work. Currently the demand is oiled leathers, pouches, ankle sheats, arrows and the occasional weapon. That's the extent of it.

We've spoken about having traders come to town on a semi-regular basis, allowing crafters and hunters and whatnot to stock up on goods and then selling them down the river. Personally I think this is a brilliant idea. I know Frigga isn't opposed to it, but there are some potential technical concerns. However, if we're going to try such a system I'd suggest doing it now while we're still in Alpha.

ETA:
I will say, the idea that NPC sales come exclusively from traders that appear once every so often and have that replace vNPC sales, I'm not opposed to. However, this would almost entirely make shops pointless as demand for crafted goods is so low in-game. So while in the long run I'd be in favor of that idea, currently it would mean that the only people making any real money would be the people who can make oiled leathers and the people selling them pelts and fish oil. Almost all other goods would drop in value to nothing as no one needs it other than to practice crafts. And that is entirely crazy as the whole point of Utterby is having it as a place which exports timber, pelts and goods made from these items. The demand several of you are talking about, simply isn't there beyond vNPC/NPC sales.

Jarlhen wrote:I don't get auction houses. I could have sworn we tried them back in the old SoI. Or was I thinking of another mud? I can't remember.

Either way, they're pointless. The purpose of an auction house is to auction off items. Not to stop vNPCs to buy. So unless it's items that a lot of people want and carry a larger investment, then there's no actual point to having one. Like, are you going to auction off boots? I don't get it. I mean anything that's expensive stays in a shop for roughly ever, whereas if it's cheap it can be made in the thousands. Like the weapon/armor shops. There are items that have been there for weeks, months even. I'm assuming vNPCs frequent these shops but I don't know.

I can confirm that the weapons and armor shops do -not- have vnpc sales. I believe this is likely due to the time it takes to create armor and weapons and not wanting players to basically go without given the dangers of Mirkwood. Not that these shops aren't incredibly profitable as they stand anyway with just player sales.

I mean weapons and armor are already hard enough to get as is, do you really want vnpcs competing with you for that honed iron longsword or oiled leather gambeson?

Mithrandur wrote:
I can confirm that the weapons and armor shops do -not- have vnpc sales. I believe this is likely due to the time it takes to create armor and weapons and not wanting players to basically go without given the dangers of Mirkwood. Not that these shops aren't incredibly profitable as they stand anyway with just player sales.

I mean weapons and armor are already hard enough to get as is, do you really want vnpcs competing with you for that honed iron longsword or oiled leather gambeson?

Cool. Good to know. That shows us though, the items aren't there simply because the crafters aren't making them (or at least putting them up for sale)or the PCs are buying them before you do. And I know more expensive items are much more rarely bought. So if all weapons were 100cp only a small number would be sold every month, whereas 10 cp purses go like butter in the sunshine. So I don't buy that vNPCs are taking all the stuff PCs want.

re: Frigga. I can totally agree to disagree. I can also argue why you shouldn't be disagreeing with me, because I think that your argument fails to take into consideration some rather key issues. After almost a year of this system, I think that we can see that it has some shortcomings that might be (relatively easily) addressed. So, here goes:

Section One: Crafting Focus by Design

There are two kinds of crafts in an RPI:

1) Useful crafts. These are crafts that produce an object that people need. These crafts turn iron chunks into iron ingots, they turn pelts into armor, they create firewood, they create chests for clan storage, they turn dead wildlife into food. Some of these crafts are more useful than others, because the demand for some objects are greater than others.

2) Useless crafts. These are crafts that produce an object that people might possibly want. These crafts make cupcakes, or clothes, or furniture only suitable for decoration, or musical instruments. These crafts have a much lower demand from the playerbase, because they are far less relevant to the average PC's journey in the game. It's important to remember that an RPI is a game, and will always be played as a game. Background objects will never be as desired as objects that will increase a PC's likeliness to succeed in their goals, nor should they be.

IMO, the ratio of the volume of useless crafts to useful crafts is very strange to me. There are a lot of niche crafts that exist, and despite being in quite low demand from players, continue to expand while entire craft-suites (and suites of more useful crafts) go relatively ignored.

Section Two: Faults of Coded Object Standardization

The advantage of allowing players to set the prices for the economy through a singular auction house (or direct player-to-player RP'd trade), is that the game follows in the direction of supply and demand. Why can't that happen with shops and no vNPC sales? Read on.

The backend of the code regulates an object's value automatically, based on its object type, quality, and components. However, what the backend of the code cannot possibly recognize, is an object's applicable value to the playerbase at large; it doesn't understand supply and demand.

And so, when you allow vNPCs to buy up cupcakes from shops, you're encouraging people to play roles that aren't suiting the inherent engine of your game and its economy. Why aren't there more armorers in Utterby? Because, creations like the Lodge and other shops give incentive to other crafting types. The worth of things like cupcakes are too great, codely, and often-times the value of armor is too little.

Removing shops and replacing them with the auction house (which isn't actually about auctioning off items, as it is offering PCs a means to sell their goods to other players without needing to own a shop of their own) would basically allow for PCs to create an economy of supply and demand, like what existed early on in Utterby when the economy actually worked. Yes, it means that more driven players will dominate, and that people who take the easy road won't be the "1%". It also means that the goods that the town needs will be made, which has been a consistent issue off and on since the sweeping anti-independent changes to the economy.

You can find other ways to give people incentives to join the Lodge, other than punishing independents. If you must manipulate the in-game clan atmosphere to support the clans that you want to see succeed, as a designer, it's important to do so without punishing proactive players who want to create their own clan. Simply put, this has always been a major issue for RPIs, and is consistently one of the bigger causes of players leaving an RPI. Many players don't like to be manipulated into having to be a part of a staff supported clan, and as I said, this issue isn't unique to just SOI.

Section Four: Import Raw Goods

And to answer Mithrandur's concern on imported goods, the smartest means to implement shipping imports/exports that do not disqualify the needs for finalized objects from Utterby crafters (oiled leather armor, honed iron weapons), is to have the rare goods that Utterby can buy from them be raw materials: such as steel ingots, steel chunks, supple tanned hides, and new variable components with rare and unique properties.

Section Five: Did We All Forget About Why We're Here?

And, of course none of this speaks to the strangest damnation of the current economy; PCs gathered to Utterby to make a fortune off of Ironwood, the rarest and most useful of all woods in the world. Ironwood is a) too easy to acquire (no danger), b) nothing special in its application to finalized objects, c) not being exported in any sort of particularly believable manner, and d) not making anyone rich, or the major focus of Utterby at all.

With the Ironwood "boom" being a bust, after almost four in-game years after the start of the boom and numerous tragedies later, why are people still in Utterby, risking their lives in a dangerous area in the middle of Mirkwood? Need story please.

ETA: Also, when will we see the effects of deforestation? Forcing Utterby loggers to need to go deeper, into more dangerous areas of the woods, would be a good thing for Utterby. Four years of constant deforestation would have certainly had a major impact on the borders of Mirkwood surrounding the town by now, particularly as most loggers tend to log within 5 miles of the town gates.

Last edited by Songweaver on Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

I want to agree with basically everything SW said (I seem to do that alot).

But the main thing is section 1. Useful crafts and craftsets. Too much focus has been put on things people dont really care about. I think giving crafts to the unused craft-sets would create a little temporary boom of players trying new professions. Farming, mining etc are all stuff we should've seen by now.

My first character took farming and the thought was that it would take a month or two for the crafts to be put in. Now its a year later and I think only now we are about to see farming in game.

The "useless" crafts adds an atmosphere, a feeling and a purpose to people who do not want to go out and fight snow trolls. Plenty of people on all muds with a crafting system enjoys these useless crafts. It would be a mistake to take this from them. Essentially you'd turn everyone in to a weapon/armor smith as that's all that'll ever truly be needed by the rest of the pbase. And that will remove a huge chunk of immersion.

As stated before, and it really doesn't matter how much you say something else because you're empirically wrong, we do not have the player base to maintain a credible PC driven economy. You think it's bad now? Wait until everyone's an armorer and there's nothing else for crafters to sell. Because that's exactly what will happen. It would completely ruin immersion, it would ruin the whole purpose of Utterby.

And this really ties in to the useless crafts. Utterby is, like SW correctly states and we've said before, based on the idea of creating wealth. It's a frontier town and people come here to make a buck. This only works if there's a big demand for what is produced in Utterby. That means hides, timbers and the items produced from these things. Timbers, historically, were used only in small part to weapon, which is the only thing that would interest PCs. Hides have, again historically, only been used in small part to supply armor. Again, the one item PCs are interested in. The products that come from these raw materials have historically, and realistically, been used for the useless crafts.

Therefore, without the useless crafts, without vNPC and NPC sales there would be no reason for Utterby to exist. And the way to solve this is NPC merchants. Utterby is not there to consume, it's there to produce. Timbers, hides, the products made from these, needs to be sold on. Creating a system that allows PCs to export would bring Utterby's reason for existing in to the actual game.

This would also allow for vNPC sales to be cut down.

Furthermore, as I suggested in the thread I made so we would stop derailing this one, easing up on the licensing system, creating a tax system to replace it, setting up smaller market stalls with more limits, would all aid tremendously in allowing people not connected to make a buck.

I also maintain that a commodities auction house makes a lot of sense. A finished products auction house is entirely unnecessary as long as we have shops. And if we make it easier for people to set up market stalls and shops and make deals with existing businesses, a product AH makes even less sense. Like what are you going to sell? "Oh here's a pair of boots. They're shit, and you can get them in the shop, but hey here they are".

And as for deforestation. Each outdoor room is like 1x1 mile or something. I'm not saying we don't need to worry about it, and over four years there might have been some affect. But with such a huge area and with the huge numbers of trees in each room (per the descriptions of how dense everything is) it's not something I'd be terrifyingly concerned with.

To note is that I'm not suggesting that more atmospheric-centric crafts be removed, or not added. I simply think that they've been developed more than warranted up to this point, while craftsets that have more universal implications have seen less effort put into their development.

In short, craftsets like farming, mining, hunting and woodcraft haven't been developed (or are in bad need of re-development), while a disproportionate amount of energy has been applied to more niche crafts and craftsets. We need farming. Having crafts for making baby clothes is just fluff, and while not without some value, are less valuable to the playerbase as a whole.

I also maintain that a PC-driven economy is doable with the current playerbase, and that making the economy more PC-driven would likely improve the population of the playerbase, as well as the output of the crafters already in the game.

ETA: The only differences between a shop and the auction house are a) players set the prices and perimeters for their goods for sale at the auction house, b) no vNPC sales for auction houses, and c) any player (theoretically) can sell through the auction house without needing to go through the Lodge or some other faction. In short, the "auction house", is just a shop that gives full power to the people.